SoaringDreams

My breath caught in my throat as I stepped off the Gondola – the local cable car. What lay in front of me had been a mere top-most priority on my bucket list a few minutes ago; now, it was tangible reality. I squealed like a newborn that was playing her first game of peek-a-boo as I bounded down the slippery steps towards my own, white heaven – I had finally seen snow!

Liberating my hands from the warmth of wool, I dug my fingers into the white delight, smiling at the way the cold nipped at my skin and the instant numbness that followed through. Ah, the joys of delayed gratification!

Once the initial awe began to wear off, I drank in the hustle of activity around me. Numerous leather and woollen clad tourists skied down the slopes, sledges hurtled past me and balls of snow whizzed through the air as elated children indulged in snow fights.

That’s when I saw it. I knew what it was even before the Colonel reaffirmed it for me. Camouflaged behind all the multi-coloured hues and exultant laughter, somberly lay the India-Pakistan Line of Control – the imaginary divide between two sister countries, explicitly embodied by a mammoth of stones arranged to form a border. Vast expanses of pallid ice spread across either side of the split. A man sat huddled close to a makeshift army tent erected at the hinge, probably a Jawaan, clutching a large rifle to his chest.

Without much contemplation, I found myself trudging toward the LOC. The air seemed to get bitterly icy with every step I took, a product of my imagination or a reflection of the history of this place, I wasn’t sure.

I stopped just a few meters short of the line. Even though the snow divulged little about the chronicles that had spun in its midst, I found myself envisioning the red this land had seen – soldiers, innocent men and women, cattle, had all been slaughtered around the very spot I stood rooted to – over nothing but political sovereignty.

The snow had quietly absorbed the bloodshed and the helpless pleas, crying only after they were all dead and gone. The sun had helped drown them in the waters of the Jhelum river. In that instant I knew, I would be carrying back with me more than just memories of snow-capped mountains.

As I drew in a shaky breath, I recognized that all those people, their unspoken hopes and desires, still lingered among these mountain peaks. The freezing wind whispered them to any traveller willing to listen.